


Treaty Day

by ottermo



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, mentions of Bellamy/Clarke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-25
Updated: 2015-02-25
Packaged: 2018-03-15 06:23:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3436820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I don't hate what I did, but I hate that it had to be me." Post-Spacewalker, Clarke tries to come to terms with what she's done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Treaty Day

**Author's Note:**

> I'm in the UK and have only seen up to 2x9, so this is probably canon divergent as hell! But I had a lot of feelings after this episode...

Clarke aches for her, sometimes so badly that it fills her throat, and she hates that she is granted empathy, on top of everything she's done.

She isn't naive enough to think forgiveness will come easily or quickly, if it comes at all. She keeps a careful, painful distance. Even though most of all she wants to share his loss with the only other person who really knew Finn Collins inside out, wants to hold a hand that held his, because the three of them were a chain and now that the middle has been ripped away, the ends should join together.

If it had happened in any way other than this, they could.

If they'd watched him burn, screamed and sobbed for him as his flesh was eaten away, if they'd collected the ashes together, held each other as the grounder army wrenched his charred and broken body from them, then they'd be closer than sisters now, one in their despair. But Clarke played too different a role in his ending for that solace. So she will watch from afar.

Sometimes she asks Bellamy how Raven is, forces herself to, even though she can't bear the look on his face. She knows he's reliving Raven shattering to pieces in his arms, knows her screams are the only sounds he can hear when Clarke's lips form her name, but still she asks, because she has to know.

The first time Bellamy reports having seen Raven smile, Clarke's crying before she even knows what's happening, and he holds her and doesn't ask why. She doesn't know why herself. One smile doesn't mean Raven is fixed, one flicker of the facial muscles means nothing at all in the face of this horror. But it's a glimmer, and the relief of it tears out of Clarke in a wail that sounds like a dying animal.

She collects and extricates herself from his embrace, then, and she does feel a pang at the hurt look on his face as she walks away, but she can't stand, sometimes, the guilt that she has Bellamy when Raven doesn't, cannot, can't ever have Finn.

If anyone deserves to have somebody hold them...

She has, of course, had to speak to Raven. They've gone on a couple of missions in the same group, and they don't snub each other if they pass by the same way. But the meeting of hearts, the catharsis Clarke wants and craves and needs, that's a long way off. She waits. She tries to seem as though she isn't waiting.

Guilt over Bellamy plagues her even apart from everything else - she wishes she could be more present for him, knows he has horrific nightmares he doesn't tell her about in an attempt to spare her more trauma. She wishes she could make him understand that she's full to the top with her own demons, that maybe helping him with his could actually do her good. One thought in Raven's direction, though, and she's overwhelmed by the feeling that she doesn't deserve any good being done to her.

She'd stand by her actions faced by an army of a thousand. She doesn't regret saving Finn from hours of unimaginable agony, doesn't regret the half-lie that sent him on to the next world, if there is one, in something resembling peace.

But she regrets, at the very core of her self, what she has done to Raven Reyes. What she did unwittingly before they even met, what she has done in all the time between, and what she did that night, when she took a blade and a promise, broke one and twisted the other in the gut of the boy they both loved.

It doesn't go away.

There are times - hours in a row, frequently, when she doesn't think about it at all. One morning she wakes up and doesn't feel blood between her fingers for a few solid minutes, and yes, it only makes the crashing realisation clamp down harder and knock the breath out of her when she remembers, but like Raven's reported smile, it's something. It's a hope that one day the rain might stop falling.

In time, she comes to realise that however much it hurts, however much of her is eaten up by grief in the meantime, she has to wait for Raven to make the first move.

She stops counting the days. They pass by just the same, until one day, they are a year.

***************************

Finn's would-be torture stake has been turned into memorial, ostensibly for the treaty itself, but it's acted as a public grave for him as well, since only the Council and some of his friends are aware of his actual burial place.

Before dawn comes, Clarke slips quietly away from a still-dozing Bellamy, leaving him a note on the back of a sketch saying she's fine (a lie) and has gone for a walk (technically true).

Raven will want her space today of all days, and Clarke reckons that out of the two of them, the other girl deserves her place at his real graveside more. As the first faint tendrils of daylight break through, she makes her way to Treaty Point, where the top of the stake has been carved into two figures shaking hands - even if for Clarke, the place stands for endings, not beginnings.

Finn does not lie in the ground beneath her feet, they took him away from this place, and new grass has grown at the foot of the stake where his blood once dripped. Still Clarke kneels there, palms outspread in front of her, as if the cool dew from the grass will wash away a bloodstain she wishes she could stop seeing.

She whispers to the boy who will never hear again: _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I wish there'd been another way, I'm sorry, Finn._

After the words dry up, she cries until she can barely breathe, and if she hears footsteps, she's beyond caring. When she feels the slight pressure of a hand on her shoulder, at first she thinks Bellamy has followed her after all - how like him to know exactly where she'd be - but she knows his embrace now like he's a continuation of her own skin, and this hand is too cautious, too poised, to be Bellamy.

Seconds pass, and she still hasn't lifted her head to see who has joined her, something in the knowledge that it isn't Bellamy and it can't be Finn ( _it will never be Finn_ ) keeping her eyes glued shut.

Eventually, she forces herself to take the slightest of glances. All she makes out through her blurry, tear-stained vision is the dusky fawn material of her mother's favourite jacket. Suddenly it all makes sense, the quiet and the lonely hand on her shoulder. Abby hadn't known how to handle interactions with Clarke since Treaty Day, and Clarke didn't blame her. Tensions had already been high between mother and daughter, with Clarke disagreeing with every second decision the chancellor made, and then... Then Abby had watched her daughter become an executioner before her very eyes. Clarke didn't bet on ever having children, but she was fairly certain that if she did, she wouldn't want to watch them kill.

She can't bring herself to face her mother, not today. It's funny, really: Abigail Griffin knows a lot about dealing out death to a person you love. She might not have personally plunged in the knife, but she'd as good as floated her own husband for the greater good. On a purely intellectual level Clarke knows her mother is her best chance at having someone understand how this feels, and hard as it is, she convinces herself to speak.

"I don't deserve anyone's pity," she chokes out. "I'm not - I don't-"

 _If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him_. It was in the Ark's constitution, the values she grew up on, and it means unforgiveness for Clarke. Forever.

"This isn't remorse. I couldn't let him burn, no-one should...no-one should ever have to die like that, not slowly, not knowing everything that's happening to you, not bit by bit by bit."

She wishes her mother would say something, anything, transform this by the power of her voice into something surmountable. But she knows she can't.

"Did you ever.... When dad... I guess it was similar. You know it has to be done and that makes it even harder. I'm sorry I hated you, Mom. I guess maybe you've forgiven me for it, though. Thanks."

If it weren't for the warmth of the hand, Clarke would start to believe she'd imagine her mother being there at all. But now the words have started again, they're easier, like every syllable brings her a tiny bit further into the light. She keeps going.

"I don't hate what I did, Mom, but I hate that it had to be me." She bites her lip, concentrates on not reliving the moment when the blade in her hand cut in. "I hate what it did to Raven. You're the only family I've got, and if something happened to you, I'd... That's what I did to Raven."

It's a terrible truth, and it's just as ugly hanging in the air as it was in her head. "I left her with no-one. The grounders would have done it if I hadn't, I know that, but I did it, not them. Me. My hands."

Hands which are now clenched, fists on the dewy earth, pounding against the ground as if it will surrender its hold on Finn, as if any of this can be undone.

"She'll never forgive me."

Her own words are like a punch in the stomach, they cripple her all over again as if they've only just hit home. She crumples forward so that her forehead is nearly at her knees, and the hand on her shoulder does not follow her. But finally, a voice.

"She's trying."

Clarke is suddenly frozen. It...can't be. Frantically she rubs her eyes and swings her head, properly this time, to see her companion.

It is her mother's fawn jacket.

It is not her mother.

"But - I thought-"

"I wasn't trying to trick you. I thought you'd at least look at me. I was cold. Abby lent me this a few days back and I keep forgetting to return it."

Clarke is utterly lost for words. "You..."

Both of them sit in silence for a long moment. Dawn has fully broken, but there is no movement in the camp save for the guard shift changeover.

"It's...not going to be easy."

Clarke nods, though she isn't sure what she's agreeing with.

"But I think...Finn would have wanted us to have each other. Do you think..."

Clarke's voice comes out huskily, but daring to hope. "Do I think what?"

"Do you think we can be friends?" Fresh tears spring to eyes Clarke thought must have shed their last, but these don't fall, just lie there, bright in her eyes. Her head is spinning a little - a mix of dehydration and total disbelief. "I really, really want to be."

"Then...so do I."

A hand is proffered, and Clarke takes it, first gingerly, then with all her strength.

It is a start.


End file.
